13.5.4 Combining Byte Ranges

13.5.4 Combining Byte Ranges

A response may transfer only a subrange of the bytes of an entity-
body, either because the request included one or more Range
specifications, or because a connection was broken prematurely. After
several such transfers, a cache may have received several ranges of
the same entity-body.

If a cache has a stored non-empty set of subranges for an entity, and
an incoming response transfers another subrange, the cache MAY
combine the new subrange with the existing set if both the following
conditions are met:

Both the incoming response and the cache entry must have a cache
validator.

The two cache validators must match using the strong comparison
function (see section 13.3.3).

If either requirement is not meant, the cache must use only the most
recent partial response (based on the Date values transmitted with
every response, and using the incoming response if these values are
equal or missing), and must discard the other partial information.